Musetec (LKS) MH-DA005 DAC

Yes, the u2 mini is a replacement for u1 mini and should be even better in paper at the same price point. I somehow forgot about it. It was just launched a few days back.

Do you keep the DAC on 24x7 or put it to standby when not playing ? If in standby, are the critical circuits powered on or does it take sometime for the DAC to sound the best, like many solid state amps do ?

I heard the Mola Mola Tambaqui DAC with streaming card and Mola Mola integrated amp today with Dynaudio speakers.

Honestly it didn't come close to the naturalness of the 005, it was harsh and bright and a much smaller soundstage. That of course is compared to the 005, compared to other DACs it probably sounds ok.

The Tambaqui is a highly touted DAC and that speaks a lot for the 005. Was the comparison between the both done in the same setup ?

yes, you would be surprised what a great front end can do to a DAC. Many times we change DAC thinking that it will bring better sound and more than often its the source that limiting the DAC from performing to its full potential.

I have a Matrix Audio X-SPDIF2 DDC that I had bought a long while for the PS Audio DS DAC. Tried briefly to feed 005 with an Audioquest I2S hdmi and compare with the USB - needless to say it was a big step down. So just moving to I2S doesn't necessarily provides an automatic sound improvement even though I2S is a native interface to the DAC chip. So its only relative to what you are using which is USB in my case.

However, the LKS DDC gets a high praise here. Its cheap enough to try one and I might get to it at some point if I am motivated enough but I will need to build another power supply which has to be equivalent or better than the one powering the JCAT USB. I think I might have hit the ceiling with 005 in terms of feeding it with clean and jitter free signal. The only way I can think of improving the sound quality further with 005 is by improving my diy server. I have few ideas which I will try over time but so far I am enjoying.

I have the 005 for couple of weeks now and it sounds very good to me. I will say that at this price point, it surprised me and concur with what has been already said about this DAC. I am enjoying it as much.

The way the USB sounds, I don't have much desire to move to I2S - my server side USB is very optimized with JCAT USB XE feed with some very exotic power supplies. I am currently trying out few USB cables though that I already have at hand (Network Acoustics, Westminster, Sablon) to see which one has better synergy with the server and 005 - they all sound fabulous in general.

@debjit_g Very interesting. Assuming you have atx board, why don't you try Pink Faun I2S board to compare with Jcat usb?
 

if I (or anyone) want to try a Pink Faun, you need to try the one with ultra OCXO clocks, otherwise a Jcat is far better sounding at much lower price point. The ultra ocxo is also very expensive and at almost 1600 eur, cost half of what 005 does. The PF I2S is also limited in bandwidth I think (or at least when I looked at getting one couple of yrs back). I would probably get the PF USB if I get one at all but the key is whatever you get, you need to feed it with the best regulated power supply you can and sometimes they can cost more than what the card does.

@sns  I am talking about the power supply feeding the PF/Jcat usb/I2S card. The network card (I use Jcat net Xe as well) is equally important. The ATX power supply is a whole different ball game and that power supply is as much critical in the equation. My server is a 3 box solution and I have invested a lot across all these power supplies alone. I don’t want to deter too much with server discussions in this thread but from experience what I can tell is the quality of power supplies rules the digital world.

The Amanero board within the Musetec does the conversion from USB to I2S just like the external boards. It does that with an excellent power supply using super-capacitors, and clocks...

Yes, all USB boards, Amanero or XMOS or JLSounds does this as this is the only way to talk to the ESS. In other words, its a small DDC inside. What matters is the clocks, power supply feeding it and isolation. With an external DDC, you bypass the additional processing inside and go almost directly to ESS. The theory is this additional processing can put strain and induce noise/jitter on the chip. Even MSB has an external ProISL interface which converts USB to Optical. I strongly believe that DAC manufacturers should take all these into account when designing a DAC of great quality. Though USB was not meant for Audio interface, there is nothing wrong when designed right.

@melm yes, I completely understand. I read through their website about it but honestly this type of architecture is nothing new - many many have implemented separating out the digital and analog completely over the years. Playback Design MPD8 has, if I am not mistaken, 6 independent psu powering different sections of the DAC. Designers have gone crazy.

I find 005’s implementation, whatever that is, very thorough with excellent and careful choice of parts (which can only be done by listening) without going overboard and for a second I don’t feel that I need to use other interface (like I2S) to make it sound better which for other DACs I felt it needed. The more I hear the 005, the more I am impressed. Its pretty clear that this DAC is tuned by ear (and I can now see why ASR’s measurements turned out to be horrible, needless to say it being misleading).

Any of the owners experimented with power cords with the 005 ? I have couple in my arsenal that I wanted to try but thought of asking if you have a preference ?

Btw, at one time I owned 3 Furutech Flux 50 NCF version but I didn't keep any of them.

@sns and @melm thanks for the recommendation.

I've only used diy power cables based on  recipes @willywonka  has developed over the past few years. They're called Helix Image, the particular recipes I've been using are the best power cables I've either auditioned or owned.

@sns Yes, I am very familiar with the helix config but I haven't tried the power cable yet. Good to hear the 005 has a great synergy. Maybe its worth exploring for me as well. My current thinking is the 005 will probably like occ copper based pc.

@melm I have used Viborg accessories, banana and spade lugs for DIY speaker cables in the past and they are extremely well made and solidly built. No doubt their power cords are up to the snuff. If you don't mind asking, what else have you compared to ?

AFAIK, the 005 is not a NOS dac and has an in-built SRC which can't be bypassed. All external s/w based conversion may either be not beneficial or might have a -ive impact on the SQ or you may not see any difference depending on the bit rate and rest of the system.

In my server the JCAT XE USB card adds only 10% of the improvement that can be had from the server when powering from the mother power. Another 10% improvement when powering it with a high quality LPS. The majority comes from the s/w & network optimization and a high power power for the server itself. I could still live with the motherboard USB port if I didn’t want to spend money on the JCAT. The motherboard USB sounds as musical, just not as much details I get from JCAT.

I can’t stress enough the importance of a good power supply for any digital components and the Musetec 005, or for that matter most of today’s DAC, will scale very nicely when fed with quality signal and it doesn’t have to be SPDIF. A good USB implementation can work wonders. Apart from the power supply, the two other things that will do the most for any streaming system is by taking great care of s/w and network optimization.

@sns you will be surprised to know that the performance of motherboard usb really depends on a lot of variables, like the motherboard, chipset used, quality of onboard clock, Operating system used etc and off-coarse the big demon power supply. I have gone through a varied different types of x86 motherboard over the yrs and I am amazed to see how much different they can sound. Even which usb port you are using changes the sound. Its not just possible to comprehend and hence an audio grade quality USB pcie card solves this part of the puzzle.

On the OS, I was an avid Euphony v3 user and Windows server 2012R2 prior to it. When I changed by motherboard later at some point and incorporated a newer Intel proc, Euphony v3 sounded really bad. The v3 was using older kernel which just didn’t optimize the system in a way it should have been with newer generation of hardware. I moved back to Windows and experimented with 10 ltsc, Server 2019 and WinPE with variety of optimization over the months, until recently when Euphony v4 was released. I did the trial and it indeed sounded very good and a lot lot better than the v3, almost same as my optimized Windows. Unfortunately, Euphony v4 moved to a subscription model which is a recurring cost and not cheap either. I am still undecided at this point.

If you want to put all hands on deck with DIY, I would suggest experiment with JCAT or Pink Faun w/ ultra ocxo clock. You never know what you are missing (I used to own the Rendu). Whatever route you go, DIY or OR, getting a quality power supply (with low impedance) will be the key to how your DAC might sound.

005 (warmer) | X1 (neutral) | DAC3B (cooler). They all use ESS chips. I am not saying that the 005 or for the matter DAC3B are worse than they X1. They sound different and each is better in a specific way.
 

this is an excellent way to demonstrate that the DAC chip is not as important as we think in determining the final sound of the DAC. They all use the same chip, except the DAC3B which uses 9028pro, but have vastly different analog implementation. The power supply, clock and analog section is paramount in determining the final sound.

Anybody tried aftermarket fuse with 005 ? I recently tried the AM m1 and like what I hear. 005 seems to already come with some kind of audio grade fuse rather than 5cent ceramic or glass fuse that very manufacturer, regardless of the price of the product, seems to put in. So in that regards, I have to give Musetec a hats off. The m1 gives a slightly fuller sound and a touch warmer. The changes are not huge by any means. I have not tried a SR purple in 005 but have them in other places in the chain and they do take the sound up a couple of notches. So I might be tempted to try one at some point but if anybody has already tried it, I would be curious to know their opinion.